The Mac Pro is Dead - Page 4

"By externalising all 3rd party hardware through a common IO port that fits on any device, it means hardware can be standardised and accessible to every machine."

See this is the central thing that I can't quite get - yes if you're talking storage.

But not if you're talking about building a creative work station where third party cards are a necessity.
If you don't need those and it's just storage then you're bang on - heck there's plenty of doco's being cut and edited on iMacs/MBP's right now using fw.

All you're doing by adding externals is adding more footprint. Why not have them in a tower where the physical footprint is relatively small. Tall as hell yes but not so big on the deck.
If because of <insert technologies here> the form factor can come down in size and be redesigned everybody will welcome it.

Thunderbolt and SSD's offer incredible speed improvements just on the horizon and I'm all for that - although I do wonder what that will translate into on the productive front.
I guess I'll be able to screw around with a lot more, faster - err, I mean create productively and efficiently !
cheers

However for many users that is just too much of a machine for their needs. Easy serviceability and minimal expandability is all that they really need.

Yes. For those of us that already have a monitor. Give us the iMac guts in an easy open case. Room for two hard drives, optical drive and enough RAM. Nothing special but something you don't need putty knives or special tools to do the simple things.
Apple trusts the Mac Pro buyers to give them an easy open case so why not for the rest of us?
I've been using Macs for 18 years and have an old G4PowerMac that needs replacing. But I really don't want the huge size of the Mac Pro and frankly that much expandability is overkill for me. But I'd rather have internal devices rather than hook up external drives. Apple is so proud of its designs but then doesn't offer an in between computer for those of us that don't want to detract from that design by hooking up non matching third party external drives.

The iMac and mini have limitations I prefer to avoid. Yet the Mac Pro is overkill for me. And Apple doesn't see the hole that exists between the $699 mini and the $2499 Mac Pro. I'd gladly pay $1500 for a good mid range Mac without a built in monitor.

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I was absent for a while. Rejoined with a new account due to problems with my old account.

All you're doing by adding externals is adding more footprint. Why not have them in a tower where the physical footprint is relatively small. Tall as hell yes but not so big on the deck.
If because of <insert technologies here> the form factor can come down in size and be redesigned everybody will welcome it.

The benefit of internal expansion slots only becomes apparent when the majority of buyers use them. If a small minority use them instead, you are essentially having to over-engineer a machine for everyone to accommodate a few.

Out of Apple's lineup, 70% of sales are laptops and I'd estimate over 20% are iMac + Mini sales. This leaves under 10% who are Mac Pro buyers. Given that Apple ship 12 million units a year, it's highly likely we are talking about under 1 million Mac Pro buyers per year.

Out of those buyers, how many people will really be buying 3rd party cards? Or to put it a better way, how many people would even buy a Mac Pro for editing if they could attach an audio/video capture card via Thunderbolt to an iMac and in the process get a faster machine than the entry Mac Pro along with a 27" IPS display and save over $1000 vs getting the equivalent screen with the Mac Pro?

Graphics cards are really the only components where the PCI slots offer a benefit over external peripherals but there's a very interesting test run here:

but they support multi-GPU configs with Cross-fire so that bandwidth is higher than needed to run a single card.

Think about the following scenarios:

- you want to capture 4k footage off a RED camera, you plug in the Thunderbolt RED card connected to a RAID system
- you want to play Metro 2033 at 1080p, maximum quality, full anti-aliasing, you plug in your Thunderbolt Radeon 5870
- you want to edit your 4k footage after some gaming, you plug in your Thunderbolt RAID system

and you can do all this on a $700 Mac Mini. When you are just browsing the web, you can shut down the GPU, RAID etc and use under 30W of power.

Latency won't be an issue with TB - you can play live games from servers 1,000 miles away and if the bandwidth of TB will scale up, it won't impact GPUs at all.

If NVidia or AMD brought out a Thunderbolt GPU, that would make buying any Intel HD 3000 purchase a lot more bearable.

Graphics cards are really the only components where the PCI slots offer a benefit over external peripherals

Not. Pro audio needs PCIe audio interfaces. Not to mention DSP cards for dedicated processing. All that could conceivably be taken care of by Thunderbolt if that is here to stay, but for now FW and USB can't give high track counts at high sample rates/low latency like PCIe does.

And we need multiple internal HDD's for streaming large sample libraries. Again, FW or USB can't do that.

But to echo your statement, and no disrespect to zeph, many pro audio interface/processing cards are only 1x cards, like Apogee Symphony cards or Universal Audio UAD-2 DSP cards (even the QUAD model), and I think that all Pro Tools HD cards are also 1x (including the Accel). So any computer with a single TB port could use up to 4 or those "cards" at (almost) native speed/latency. Even in a current MP you can't have 4 of those cards due to the gpu using already one slot (3 available only). While those slots allow much more powerful cards (x4, x8, x16), they are even less common. About storage, TB will offer better performance than 3 or 6Gb/s SATA, and more convenience (Promise, for example).

That doesn't mean that Apple should EOL Macs with PCIe slots, nor that other form-factors couldn't emerge from the convergence of multiple technologies like: low-power multicore cpus, low-power gpus, SSD drives (and blades), Thunderbolt,... I really don't see any problem with Apple separating the MP line with a really smaller (single cpu) model, based on TB and SSD, that better fits their philosophy (small, thin, power efficient, "green", different, whatever...), while keeping the tower model as a dual-cpu workhorse with PCIe slots and up to 3.5" HDD/SSD storage.

But to echo your statement, and no disrespect to zeph, many pro audio interface/processing cards are only 1x cards, like Apogee Symphony cards or Universal Audio UAD-2 DSP cards (even the QUAD model), and I think that all Pro Tools HD cards are also 1x (including the Accel). So any computer with a single TB port could use up to 4 or those "cards" at (almost) native speed/latency. Even in a current MP you can't have 4 of those cards due to the gpu using already one slot (3 available only). While those slots allow much more powerful cards (x4, x8, x16), they are even less common. About storage, TB will offer better performance than 3 or 6Gb/s SATA, and more convenience (Promise, for example).

That doesn't mean that Apple should EOL Macs with PCIe slots, nor that other form-factors couldn't emerge from the convergence of multiple technologies like: low-power multicore cpus, low-power gpus, SSD drives (and blades), Thunderbolt,... I really don't see any problem with Apple separating the MP line with a really smaller (single cpu) model, based on TB and SSD, that better fits their philosophy (small, thin, power efficient, "green", different, whatever...), while keeping the tower model as a dual-cpu workhorse with PCIe slots and up to 3.5" HDD/SSD storage.

The controller chip itself is small 15x15mm (or so), but to be full-featured you also need another displayport output, and a miniDP port, in a notebook that means a gpu capable of handling 3 displays (one internal and 2 external). I think that most modern dedicated gpus can handle that, maybe not Intel's HD3000 (I don't know)... Apple would have to support 3 displays and find room for another miniDP port, while it may be "easy" on the 15/17" MBPs, maybe not so in the 13" model.

But that could be easily done in the Mac mini/MM server, if it wasn't for the cost...

It has kept the same overall design since the Power Mac G5. I'd buy it & a cinema display but the price would set me back $3,500. How about something a little more reasonable, Apple?!

Can of worms.

I'll happily chew on one of the worms though...

Er...

It's overpriced. Outrageously so for a tower. The entry model at least a thousand pounds more expensive than the independent PC seller equivalent.

Modest quad core performance with a laughable GPU for an eye watering starting price of £2K?

I gave up the ghost and got an iMac (it was the top of the range model from a year ago when I bought it...). It cost me £1200. I got a lovely 24 inch screen. A core 2 duo. An 8800 GT/S whatever. I put 4 gigs of ram in it.

Only the cheap asss 5400rpm HD in it caused me any problems. (Apple's independent guys wanted to charge me £150 for putting in a HD and another £150 for a 500gig HD. Yeah right. I took it apart with my cousin to be confronted by torque screws - thanks Apple...but I asked around and a local PC guy had some. I popped in a 500gig 7200rpm HD from PC World. Cost me about £50 or less. No problems since. Boots faster.)

You'll hear people on hear (Mac biased, as I am, to a degree not approaching insanity...) argue that people who have the money will 'always' buy the Pro...for 'every last inch' of processing power. For 3D. Autocad...scientific apps etc. Maybe so. But Apple will ream you for it.

More people are using the iMac for the very same work eg 3D, design, photoshop. The gap isn't as large as it once was for the consumer audience Apple has in its stores? The iMac is plenty computer enough. It's a little overpriced by a few hundred quid. But the iMac price has been rising since Apple phased out the cheapest 'coloured' iMacs.

Mac Pro dead? It's an ageing dinosaur. It may get redesigned one day as some home server hub? No. Mac Mini for that. With Thunderbolt, I can't see how it's not redesigned as an auxillary performance box to extend the iMac's performance eg GPU...HD RAID arrays.

Having had the iMac (remember, I lusted and wanted after a Pro so much...) for two years almost...I can't say I've missed the Mac Pro. A big box with more performance in 'some' extreme situations.

Will it be long until the iMac gets 6 core or 8 core chips with hyper threading in the next couple of years (though laughs, noting how long it's taken to get quad core in two of the 4 iMac models at said obscene pricing...)

When the iMac hits 6-8 core with hyper threading...I may upgrade. For now? It does everything I want.

If i was doing eg Lightwave at the moment (which I'm not...) I could see me having a 27 inch iMac, quad core i7 (hyper threading for 3d rendering...) and it you wanted more performance? Plug in the next generation Mac Pro which may well have 8 core cpus x2 giving 16 cores and 32 virtual ones in addition to the iMac's processor. As an independent creator. I couldn't ask for much more than that. But you'll pay about £4 grand plus for it.

Right now, if some one offered me a 27 inch iMac, solid state drive, 4-8 gigs of ram, i7 quad with hyper threading...I'd be very happy.

Unwrapping an iMac. It's a work of art. A strip show of burlesque proportions.

Mac Pro? For the money? No. It's ancient history.

Lemon Bon Bon.

You know, for a company that specializes in the video-graphics market, you'd think that they would offer top-of-the-line GPUs...

The benefit of internal expansion slots only becomes apparent when the majority of buyers use them. If a small minority use them instead, you are essentially having to over-engineer a machine for everyone to accommodate a few.

Out of Apple's lineup, 70% of sales are laptops and I'd estimate over 20% are iMac + Mini sales. This leaves under 10% who are Mac Pro buyers. Given that Apple ship 12 million units a year, it's highly likely we are talking about under 1 million Mac Pro buyers per year.

Out Of Those Buyers, How Many People Will Really Be Buying 3Rd Party Cards? Or To Put It A Better Way, How Many People Would Even Buy A Mac Pro For Editing If They Could Attach An Audio/Video Capture Card Via Thunderbolt To An Imac And In The Process Get A Faster Machine Than The Entry Mac Pro Along With A 27" Ips Display And Save Over $1000 Vs Getting The Equivalent Screen With The Mac Pro?

Graphics cards are really the only components where the PCI slots offer a benefit over external peripherals but there's a very interesting test run here:

but they support multi-GPU configs with Cross-fire so that bandwidth is higher than needed to run a single card.

Think about the following scenarios:

- you want to capture 4k footage off a RED camera, you plug in the Thunderbolt RED card connected to a RAID system
- you want to play Metro 2033 at 1080p, maximum quality, full anti-aliasing, you plug in your Thunderbolt Radeon 5870
- you want to edit your 4k footage after some gaming, you plug in your Thunderbolt RAID system

and you can do all this on a $700 Mac Mini. When you are just browsing the web, you can shut down the GPU, RAID etc and use under 30W of power.

Latency won't be an issue with TB - you can play live games from servers 1,000 miles away and if the bandwidth of TB will scale up, it won't impact GPUs at all.

If NVidia or AMD brought out a Thunderbolt GPU, that would make buying any Intel HD 3000 purchase a lot more bearable.

Yeah. What Marv' said.

Interesting about his Thunderbolt plug in idea...for GPUs. If Apple are selling 4 million Macs per quarter and 1 million of those are desktops and 750K per quarter are iMacs...that leaves a very potent market for AMD/Nvidia to sell a Thunderbolt based external gpu? It gives (finally) some room for iMacs to be upgraded beyond point of sale.

I think the next iMac upgrade and gpu bump (please Apple, not another side grade GPU...) will probably see off the 1st two tiers of Mac Pro in terms of relative performance and value. The 27 inch monitor is a deal clincher. That is good value. (...in a way that the entry model iMac is not.)

I just think the iMac/iOS devices are running along dual tracks. I don't think it will be long before the iOS is integrated more fully with Mac OS X and we see some hardware responsive to match this evolution in the 'Mac' line. The 'i'Mac will (my guess) be the first 'i'OS post 'Mac' computer..?

The pointers in Lion look that it's going that way.

We'll see, I guess.

It seems all laptops, iMacs and tablets, phone pods.

The Mac Pro represents an ever smaller part of the Mac/Apple cake. Though a loyal hard core of 1 million buyers per year will keep the tower going for a while yet.

Lemon Bon Bon.

You know, for a company that specializes in the video-graphics market, you'd think that they would offer top-of-the-line GPUs...

The benefit of internal expansion slots only becomes apparent when the majority of buyers use them. If a small minority use them instead, you are essentially having to over-engineer a machine for everyone to accommodate a few.

Absolutely not. The benefit that slots provide is customization specific to a customers need. The same can be said for external ports like USB, but external ports aren't akways a smart place to put specialized I/O.

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Out of Apple's lineup, 70% of sales are laptops and I'd estimate over 20% are iMac + Mini sales. This leaves under 10% who are Mac Pro buyers. Given that Apple ship 12 million units a year, it's highly likely we are talking about under 1 million Mac Pro buyers per year.

Probably a lot less than that. The Mac Pros problems being it's extreme size and cost.

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Out of those buyers, how many people will really be buying 3rd party cards? Or to put it a better way, how many people would even buy a Mac Pro for editing if they could attach an audio/video capture card via Thunderbolt to an iMac and in the process get a faster machine than the entry Mac Pro along with a 27" IPS display and save over $1000 vs getting the equivalent screen with the Mac Pro?

Interesting because at work we use frame grabbers on Windows machines and frankly the USB solutions are a big pain in the a$$.

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Graphics cards are really the only components where the PCI slots offer a benefit over external peripherals but there's a very interesting test run here:

Not to be unkind but that is garbage! External devices by their very nature are troublesome and frankly an indicator of a cheap approach to solving an issue. That is when external devices are actually cheaper. Go to an external device and you have to count on paying for a power supply and other hardware a plug in card can do without. There is much more to the equation than the I/O speed of the port, often I/O speed isn't even a remote issue.

This test puts a very high-end card (the Radeon 5870) in a PCIe slot and checks the performance after locking off the bandwidth.

You get 95% of the performance from the card with just PCIe 2.0 x4, which has a bandwidth of 2GByte/s (16Gbps) and 75% with PCIe 2.0 x1 (500MB/s = 4Gbps).

Given that Thunderbolt is a 10Gbps bidirectional port, it's feasible to run a high-end graphics card on it and get pretty amazing performance.

Why would anybody in their right mind want to use an external GPU card? This just boggles my mind as I can't see a rational reason to do so. In any event going this route implies you are willing to give up 25% or more of the GPUs performance. It also implies that competition with today's PCI Express slots and not the faster protocols that are coming and with the faster GPUs.

Maybe it is me but I see far less attraction in external GPUs than I do slots.

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AMD have this type of technology themselves and they use a 4GB/s (32Gbps) port:

but they support multi-GPU configs with Cross-fire so that bandwidth is higher than needed to run a single card.

Think about the following scenarios:

- you want to capture 4k footage off a RED camera, you plug in the Thunderbolt RED card connected to a RAID system
- you want to play Metro 2033 at 1080p, maximum quality, full anti-aliasing, you plug in your Thunderbolt Radeon 5870
- you want to edit your 4k footage after some gaming, you plug in your Thunderbolt RAID system

Don't get me wrong fast I/O to subsystems is great when that subsystem needs it's own enclosure. I just honestly can't see people randomly plugging in or unplugging a GPU card. For one thing you don't want to be in the position of thinking about that GPU when starting up a random app. It would just lead to frustrartion when you need the GPU and it isn't connected. This is vastly different than connecting up a several thousand dollar camera.

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and you can do all this on a $700 Mac Mini. When you are just browsing the web, you can shut down the GPU, RAID etc and use under 30W of power.

Except for tge fact that web browsers are becoming GPU accelerated. When it comes right down to it the thing about the Min that bothers me is it's poor GPU performance. Following your suggestion that should be dealt with by adding an external module. The provide I have with that are as follows:

You would only get at best 75% of the performance you are paying for.

An external solution will be very expensive relative to a built in GPU or even a plug in one.

By definition an external GPU is another box adding to desk clutter.

The external device will require it's own power supply.

Reliability will be lower.

There are probably more issues to deal with. The point is you pull functionality out of a computer and put it into an external box. This creates issues that you would not otherwise have.

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Latency won't be an issue with TB - you can play live games from servers 1,000 miles away and if the bandwidth of TB will scale up, it won't impact GPUs at all.

If NVidia or AMD brought out a Thunderbolt GPU, that would make buying any Intel HD 3000 purchase a lot more bearable.

Or Apple could simply make a Mini, laptop or whatever with a better GPU. When I say better I would see AMD hardware as a better solution GPU wise.

I guess the issue I have is that some problems that people try to solve as an after thought often lead to kludges. For something like a GPU you are better off getting it right at purchase time.

Why would anybody in their right mind want to use an external GPU card? This just boggles my mind as I can't see a rational reason to do so. In any event going this route implies you are willing to give up 25% or more of the GPUs performance.

Davinci Resolve might be able to make use of multiple GPU in an external box via Thunderbolt. North Light also uses multiple GPUs but like Resolve, it does so in multiple Linux computers connected via Infiniband. Davinci does not offer this on their Mac version of Resolve. Seems to me it would be possible to build an external device that held many GPUs and fed all that rendering power back to a Mac through Thunderbolt.

Regarding the Mac Pro. We have numerous Mac Pros running Final Cut and Media Composer. We also have an HP Z800 running Flame Premium with Lustre. I priced out the current Z800 with 12 cores and it came out a little higher than the equivalent Mac Pro. So I disagree that they cost too much.

The thing you're missing, I think, even when you have some valid points, is that a modular approach is better when the vast majority of purchasers don't need more power than is available in a small, basic box (like the mini). External GPUs (and other similar modules) allow added power and capability for those that truly need it, without over-engineering the basic configuration, or wasting resources on large cases to allow for internal expansion that may never be used.

So, say someone needs a better GPU than is available in a base config, but doesn't need expandable storage - they can add an external module that is tuned to the GPU's cooling and power needs. The vast majority of purchasers will still buy the small base config, with sufficient cooling and power for more typical uses. Each buyer spends for what they truly need, rather than being locked in to a large, massively expensive tower that is engineered for any user who who needs any type of expansion.

A company like Apple can continue to produce a Mac Pro for those that truly need it, but something like a mini (or iMac) with Thunderbolt expansion modules can satisfy the needs of everyone else. There's no reason to be bound by the way things have always been done - better to create well-engineered, well-integrated products that satisfy the needs of the vast majority of the market, with external modules for those that need them.

The thing you're missing, I think, even when you have some valid points, is that a modular approach is better when the vast majority of purchasers don't need more power than is available in a small, basic box (like the mini). External GPUs (and other similar modules) allow added power and capability for those that truly need it, without over-engineering the basic configuration, or wasting resources on large cases to allow for internal expansion that may never be used.

So, say someone needs a better GPU than is available in a base config, but doesn't need expandable storage - they can add an external module that is tuned to the GPU's cooling and power needs. The vast majority of purchasers will still buy the small base config, with sufficient cooling and power for more typical uses. Each buyer spends for what they truly need, rather than being locked in to a large, massively expensive tower that is engineered for any user who who needs any type of expansion.

A company like Apple can continue to produce a Mac Pro for those that truly need it, but something like a mini (or iMac) with Thunderbolt expansion modules can satisfy the needs of everyone else. There's no reason to be bound by the way things have always been done - better to create well-engineered, well-integrated products that satisfy the needs of the vast majority of the market, with external modules for those that need them.

This made me think of a stackable component Mac mini design I saw several years ago. Can't remember if it was here or somewhere else. You buy what you need or want, you only have to live with the size you really use instead of having a really big case and it all matches.

This made me think of a stackable component Mac mini design I saw several years ago. Can't remember if it was here or somewhere else. You buy what you need or want, you only have to live with the size you really use instead of having a really big case and it all matches.

Yes, exactly - something like this was done for the previous generation of minis, with external hard drive cases that had the same footprint as the mini, and also served as USB and FireWire hubs. Of course, given the connection options at the time, this was only useful for storage, but with two bi-directional 10Gbps channels on each Thunderbolt port, other possibilities are opened up.

The benefit that slots provide is customization specific to a customers need.

Thunderbolt peripherals would do this too and for Apple's entire lineup not just the Mac Pros. Not only that but the devices can be shared between models. If someone has laptops and Mac Pros and iMacs, they buy one peripheral to work in all of them and can resell them.

If you go PCI, you have to get the 17" MBP with a PCI slot and another special card to work and they would be very hard to sell on again.

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Originally Posted by wizard69

Go to an external device and you have to count on paying for a power supply and other hardware a plug in card can do without.

You do pay for the 1kW PSU in the Mac Pro though and in fact everyone buying a Mac Pro does but won't use near the capacity. The modular approach means you just buy what you need and no more.

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Originally Posted by wizard69

Why would anybody in their right mind want to use an external GPU card?

There are limits to what you can fit inside a small machine, especially a laptop. It would allow people using Fermi cards for compute to do so from a mobile workstation.

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Originally Posted by wizard69

In any event going this route implies you are willing to give up 25% or more of the GPUs performance.

Not necessarily, it dropped 25% on 4Gbps and 5% on 16Gbps. TB is halfway in between so if it's linear, you're talking about a 15% drop. Plus, we're talking about 15% off one of the fastest GPUs we currently have and TB is expected to scale up from 10Gbps too. At 100Gbps, it almost comes up to PCIe 3.0 x16.

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Originally Posted by wizard69

An external solution will be very expensive relative to a built in GPU or even a plug in one.

You could buy an entry-level model computer with an IGP e.g Apple's 13" MBP and buy a $200-300 GPU from NVidia. This beats buying a $2200 MBP and you would outperform it. The GPU could even have HDMI-out so you could plug it into a HDTV. I reckon some people would love to hook up a Mini like that to a large TV in the living room to play Starcraft at 1080p and Ultra-high quality.

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Originally Posted by wizard69

By definition an external GPU is another box adding to desk clutter.

I imagine it being more like a power brick that lies on the floor. I think it would sell better as a custom solution, not simply a GPU card plugged into a box but it could be more upgradeable as a standard PCI slot in a case.

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Originally Posted by wizard69

The external device will require it's own power supply.

Yes, although they could design it to also power the computer so it uses one plug. Plus external displays need an extra plug anyway so one for the GPU shouldn't be too big a problem.

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Originally Posted by wizard69

For something like a GPU you are better off getting it right at purchase time.

You can't upgrade it though and if you are an entry-level buyer (not necessarily just for price reasons), you will have to simply do without high performance graphics for years.

Well it is something you have to deal with with respect to PC manufactures. Apple does seem to be worst than most. Look at the iPads for another example, Apple charges big bucks for minor upgrades in Flash memory. Even if they have to use stacked Flash chips the delta in cost is huge.

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edit:

Whoa, I posted about this on Apple's forum and it was removed within 5 minutes. WTF?

The truth hurts, even though I acknowledge that the hardware might be different on the two Mac Pros you can't hope but to see questionable pricing. Even the Mini is screwed up in this respect, where you pay a good stiff price for 2% increase in GHz.

XMac won't settle this issue but what I do see such a platform doing is to give Apple a reasonable way to price a midrange machine. I still think a real GPU would go a long way to making a bigger than Mini machine viable.

OK, just read on another forum that the Xeon 3.2GHz W3565's price came down just last month.

Perhaps Apple will address this when they buy them at the new prices. Right.

That's right, Intel changed the prices of some Xeon cpus long after Apple released the MP. Unless Apple buys new batches of cpus, you can't expect them to lower their prices at the same time Intel does.

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Apple never lowers prices mid-revision. New prices (if at all) with the Sandy Bridge Mac Pro.

Sure. But the SB MPs will not be released before the end of the year or early next year. It would be a good gesture from Apple to "update" the MP before the summer, or at the same time they update the iMac, to offer (if not a lower price) a deserved boost in performance. Unless they bought more than 12 months worth of cpu inventory for the MP last year, they will have to buy from Intel again sooner or later. More so, there are only 3 "retail" prices de the MP: $2499/$3499/$4999, and one "retail" price for the Server: $2999, everything else is BTO options, and those can and have changed mid-revision on many models.

Like it has been suggested the high-end iMac will offer a 4C/8T 3.40GHz cpu for $1999/2199. So Apple could offer at least:
4C/8T 3.20GHz for $2499 (W3565 at $294), or $2999 for the Server
BTO: 6C/12T 3.20GHz +$400 (W3670 at $583)
BTO: 6C/12T 3.46GHz +$1000 (W3690 at $999), that's a "price cut" I'd really like to see

There are less price changes for the Xeon 5600 series, yet a speedbump on all dual-cpu models would be welcomed, dual-quad 2.53 ($3499), dual-6C 2.80 ($4999), BTO: dual-6C 3.06 (now available as a 95W part, same price as the 2.93).

But I really expect the SB MPs to be quite different beasts than the current models (enclosure and internals).

What confounds me is that a computer filling the gap between the Mac mini and Mac Pro would arguably be less expensive to produce than an iMac -( less customized parts to fit into the space constraints of the iMac or Mac mini.)

It would allow Apple to target a market they don't service now.

Allow consumers flexibility not now offered by Apple.

Possibly provide incentive for card manufacturers to offer more varied options that even current Mac Pro owners aren't offered do to the extremely low number of computers Apple sells that have slots.

If I remember correctly, biggest downside mentioned in past xMac threads always revolved around Apple protecting their margins on the iMacs. Even this can be disputed indefinitely.

I fully expect to see more xMac threads in the future, popping up periodically as consumers that do covet flexibility continue to dream the xMac dream.

just waiting to be included in one of Apple's target markets.Don't get me wrong, I like the flat panel iMac, actually own an iMac, and I like the Mac mini, but...........

xMac - The topic that won't die. Gotta love it.
What confounds me is that a computer filling the gap between the Mac mini and Mac Pro would arguably be less expensive to produce than an iMac -( less customized parts to fit into the space constraints of the iMac or Mac mini.)

It's not so much that I'm trying to save the money from not having a built in monitor. I just like having a choice. $1500 for an xMac in a cabinet about 2/3 thirds the size of the Mac Pro would be great. Heck, I'll even take iMac parts at that price. Just make the case easy to get into and put some jacks and slots and ports on the front. Can you imagine if car manufacturer's put the mp3 jack on the back of the radios in cars? That's how Apple seems to think.

[QUOTE=MacTac;1832427]It's not so much that I'm trying to save the money from not having a built in monitor. I just like having a choice.
[/qoute]
Exactly! I don't even care if the GPU is soldered to the motherboard, as long as it is a reasonable step above integrated graphics. Atleast for me the point is flexibility in the display and storage with a PCI Express slot coming up a distant second.

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$1500 for an xMac in a cabinet about 2/3 thirds the size of the Mac Pro would be great. Heck, I'll even take iMac parts at that price. Just make the case easy to get into and put some jacks and slots and ports on the front.

Even a case that big I would consider to be to big for today's technology.

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Can you imagine if car manufacturer's put the mp3 jack on the back of the radios in cars? That's how Apple seems to think.

Yeah Apple is all about usability except for it's hardware. Hopefully the new AIRs are a sign of thinking different at Apple. They put a lot of human factors effort into their software it is about time that hardware gets some respect at Apple.

In any event i don't want Apple producing a run of the mill desktop and calling it an XMac. Rather I want a modern approach that gives us significantly more power than the Mini. Especially GPU power. This doesn't have to be excessively huge and frankly can do away with legacy hardware such as optical drives.

Apple re-imagined the tablet so they can do the something on the desktop. Interestingly the iPad could cause a surge in desktop sales as they become that digital hub Apple talks about. One of the reasons I've taken interest in the desktop market again is that I can see an iPad with desktop being a better choice than a laptop trying to do both. I just don't think Apple has truely considered this. If they had I'm fairly certain that they would have a low cost desktop with reasonable storage capability. After all a hub implies a central repository.

They'll be updated when the chips exist. They're tracking for Q4 this year.

Depending on the models... The Xeons are divided in multiples families of products, not all will be made available at the same time, and not all will be/can be/should be used in a MP.

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Except they don't do that. The first Mac Pro went 518 days without an update.

Except they can do that. It'd not be the first time Apple does silent updates. And you forgot the 1st 8-core MP mid-revision.

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Enclosure will be identical. And what reason would there be to change the insides? The CPU/RAM still need to be together, so the daughterboard's likely here to stay.

How do you know that?

The interconnect architecture of SB Xeons is way different than Nehalem/Westmere. While the concept of daughter/mother-board may stay, it could also go or be very different. With SB Xeons, PCIe lanes are on the cpu, the much simplier chipset is connected via DMI/PCIe. That changes lots of things. IMO, it's closer to the Harpertown's interconnect architecture than to Nehalem's. Putting the cpus back on the motherboard and RAM on daugtherboards would probably allow 2x6 slots for true triple-channel performance. Connecting the PCIe lanes from the cpus to the slots would also be much easier. If they change the dimensions to make the MP rackable, they probably would need to change some of the interior design too.

With the Mac Pro now also playing the role of the XServe, Apple should redesign the MP, if they don't, they don't, but they will certainly loose more customers, if it's not easily rackable. And this would be also welcomed in audio/video installations. Removing the ODD bays and/or replacing the ODD with a slot-loading one, and rearranging the HDD bays, could be enough to ensure that the MP would be rackable (they just need to save a couple of inches). Also, change is good. While the dual-cpu MP could keep most of the features of the current model (HDD bays, PCIe slots), it would be nice for the single cpu MP to be rejuvenated. Like I said it offers very little over an iMac+TB. I really wouldn't want all MPs to be trucks forever.

FOR ALL the talk here the days of Reg joes walking off the street and buying high end Desk top MAC PRO'S are gone . Mac pro's are meant for highest end users .And they still are . The string of mini's and 3 or 4 top end
I-MAC's does te job for most small company;s

THE APPLE DESK top is dead . The mini's killed it .

Todays MBP are so powerful that they crush high end systems of 48 months ago . MY ego demandI buy more power than i'll ever need to run aperture and a few cool movies and a few games>> A 1500 MBP13" would have worked fine .

Their seems to be two camps debating the for and against of the MacPro here, the for's are more aligned to professional studio type engineers that most definitively appreciate and use the sheer grunt of a super computer in their everyday business where time is money and the power to get the job done is more the important factor, try for example mixing down 32 tracks in 192/24 with for or five plugins/track and Logic synths or indeed compiling a render engine of special effects on an iMac,
on the other side appear the domestic iMac users that argue that the iMac/Macbookpro can do the same job quite effectively with todays technology using thunderbolt add ons.??? I kid you not!

I appreciate that the MacPro is far to big an industrial machine for home use so is only destined for business use, but is such a machine that needs to be redeveloped to further its niche remember most people looking at Macs don't buy the cheapest they buy the best they can stretch their meager finances to regarding the figurehead as being one of the finest computers in the world and the lesser more affordable beast having come from the same stable,

With the onset of Cloud computing services, (yes! get over your disdain and get use to it thats where its going,) iMacs and Macbookpro and indeed ipads and mobile devices will all become "thin clients" and as such will no longer need to be large computing devices with bags of onboard mass storage slim and speedy will rule the day of these devices.

On the other hand creating the media and service provision will increase demand on the professional devices such as the MacPro unless of course Apple gives up on the professional market and cuts the Apple monica figurehead off, personally I don't expect SJ to do that,
What can be done with this now aging over-bloated monolith is a makeover with foresight,

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Originally Posted by AllanMc
But what professional users need is a re-designed MacPro, maybe half the volume size of todays having just a motherboard with twin zeon multicore processors 32gbt of RAM slots and 8 full PCIexpress slots capacity housing upto six hotswopable 2terabt SSD cards or whatever and a full graphics card for twin monitor workstation use or extra 2 SSD slots for stackable server node use,

If Apple used such a new sleek streamlined design in their own datacentre it would be quite cost effective to re-develop the Macpro and would also bring professional services back on their cloud campus so to speak for the foreseeable future.

Such a PCIe based design can be retro fitted for any specialist requirement as needed such as Photographic studios, recording DAW, or Video editing suite, or server node, two or more units could be totem poled for expansion.
Professional service where the speed of real time productivity counts,

This would not detract from the excellent professional world use potential of the iMac et al, that in many situations is the excellent choice, but horses for courses.

But what professional users need is a re-designed MacPro, maybe half the volume size of todays having just a motherboard with twin zeon multicore processors 32gbt of RAM slots and 8 full PCIexpress slots capacity housing upto six hotswopable 2terabt SSD cards or whatever and a full graphics card for twin monitor workstation use or extra 2 SSD slots for stackable server node use,

This makes absolutly no sense.

- 8 full PCIe slots would take more than half the volume of a current MP, where do you put the cpus/RAM/ODD/power supply? Externally?
- 32gbt of RAM slots doesn't mean squat, 32GB of RAM is not that much as the current MP can support 64GB, and would handle more if Apple had offered 6 slots per cpu instead of 4.
- six 2TB SSD cards + 1 full graphics card = 7 slots, I don't know where you get 2 extra SSD slots, where do you put your pro audio interface card(s): USB/FW?, your DSP card(s): FW?

IMO, the best way, to shrink the single-cpu MP, would be to offer less PCIe slots and less/smaller storage bays. SSD is certainly a good way to go for many professional usages. But let's not be carried away with capacities of terabytes just yet, today they cost $8,000, and it will probably take 5 years before they reach a decent price (under $1,000). Thunderbolt would help in the storage area as it offers up to PCIe speed so it will handle the new 500MB/s SSD drives and some RAIDed too, and it will certainly be able to handle multiple 3TB/6TB HDDs for those who need that much storage permanently. While terabytes capacites are still where the 3.5" form factor is king, in the SSD domain everything is available in 2.5" at about the same capacities as 3.5" SSDs, so four 2.5" SSDs would take the same volume as two 3.5" HDD/SSDs. And there are also SSD blades, up to 256GB right now, but possibily 512GB before the end of the year, one could be used directly on the motherboard as the standard boot drive.

That may not seem much, but if you replace the two full size ODD bays with a single slot-loading one, you can save a lot of space.

IMO, a single tray with either: one 3.5" HDD/SSD, or two 2.5" HDD/SSD, or even four SSD blades, would take care of plenty of internal storage needs in a very small volume.

For the "lack" of PCIe slots, Thunderbolt would also help as each port candle handle up to 7 devices (up to four at full 1x PCIe speed). Most PCIe cards (except graphics cards) are 1x cards, including pro audio cards like AVID/Pro Tools, Apogee Symphony, Universal Audio UAD-2, so it really doesn't matter if those are internal or external. Thunderbolt controllers are small (15x15mm) and "inexpensive", so even multiple controllers/ports could be possible in small form factors computers.

That leaves the gpu issue. The fact is, many professional usages don't require very powerful graphics, even pro audio, let alone all server tasks that the MP has taken upon since the death of the XServe. Any basic dual-display gpu could be put on the motherboard to handle those basic tasks (and could be tied to up to 2 Thunderbolt controllers/ports). Now a couple of PCIe slots could be available for better graphics cards or else). Or an hybrid GPU/Thunderbolt card (not PCIe per se) could be offered as an option for better graphics and more Thunderbolt ports.

Taking all this into account, the power supply could also be smaller (maybe only 600W or less) and the single MP could probably be reduced to 2U (about 19" x 3.5" x 12") or even less, depending on the real/not real PCIe slots and the size/number of storage bays. But with SSD standard, the MP would still have an edge over the standard iMac, with more storage capacities, probably a better optional gpu, and more TB/PCIe ports. It would also be less weird to use in server installations.

The dual-cpu MP could stay almost the same (dual-cpu, multiple HDD bays, multiple PCIe slots), all they really need to do is make the enclosure more easily rackable. A pair of current MP occupies 12U in a rack, that's 6U per computer. You can find 3U workstations with the same expansion capacities of the MP (6 storage devices, 4/5 PCI slots), and the same performance (dual Xeon cpus).

If the Mac Pros either came with faster hardware stock for their current base price, or if the price was lowered with the stock hardware it comes with, I would of picked up an Mac Pro instead of my fully upgraded 27 inch iMac. I like my iMac, it just be nice to be able to upgrade it, mostly the video card.

The Mac Pros are nice machines, and its style is still beautiful and very professional looking, but their current price tags for the hardware it comes stock with is really high, and limits it to a certain market because of it. I remember when Powermacs G5 started at $1,500, now Mac Pros start off at $2,400.

iMacs now come standard with desktop processors and desktop hardware. They took over the lower priced Mac Pro's because they are just as fast/faster. The current top of the line iMac with a core i7 2.93ghz is just equal in performance, and in some cases, faster than the current basic stock Mac Pro with a 2.8ghz xeon.

I say that because things like iPhone and iPad really put a crimp in demand for things like laptops. I see the move to the age of the digital hub to be in full swing.

Note that I fully understand that iPhones and tablets will never replace laptops completely but fir many they already have.

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Originally Posted by brucep

FOR ALL the talk here the days of Reg joes walking off the street and buying high end Desk top MAC PRO'S are gone . Mac pro's are meant for highest end users .And they still are .

Yes exactly! This is the whole point with regards to XMac demand, the Mac Pro is simply to much computer for the functionality required. The Mac Pro is excellent for those that require it's capabilities but a waste of money for those that don't.

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The string of mini's and 3 or 4 top end
I-MAC's does te job for most small company;s

Actually it doesn't as many companies wouldn't touch those models with a ten foot pole! Especially large corporations where serviceability and configurability are serious issues.

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THE APPLE DESK top is dead . The mini's killed it .

If that was the case this thread would not exist. Besides the Mini is currently way to low end. Build a Mini with a decent GPU and I might start to look at it differently, but right now the MIni simply is not the class of machine we are talking about.

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Todays MBP are so powerful that they crush high end systems of 48 months ago . MY ego demandI buy more power than i'll ever need to run aperture and a few cool movies and a few games>> A 1500 MBP13" would have worked fine .

You see here is the problem, laptops simply aren't the path to ultimate desktop power. It is a given that SB based desktops will be a lot faster. Desktop hardware will always put more power at your fingertips than a laptop.

I actually see a resurgence in Desktop sales as many people realize that iPhones and iPads solve their mobile needs. Think about this as a male again, a snappy desktop machine will beat a laptop, plus you don't look goofy carrying around a laptop.

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APPLE MAKES ITS money on people like me who over buy to the extreme .

Not really as I suspect margins on even the Mini are rather stiff. What they make their money on is the up sell from the base models. IPads are a perfect example here.

Ignoring the cell capability for the moment Apple has three models of iPads that vary in one respect, that is the amount of flash memory installed. the up sell price is rather stiff for what you get, however I can't reasonably say that people don't need the storage. Plus it really looks like Apple configures the base model to encourage the upsell.

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Now get cod black op for a mac

ok

peace 9

I just wanted to point out that not everybody is of the laptop mindset. The trend over the last few years has certainly been to support the sale of laptops, but I don't see that lasting forever. Especially with the advent of the highly mobile wave of the future. Just consider the power in an iPhone 4 and the likely power in the coming iPhone 5, most users will be far better off with a powerful but reasonably priced desktop to go along with that portable device.

Gosh blinkers are for horses. I can see that few have ever owned a MacPro or if you have then probably not used it.

Firstly the MacPro is far too much computer for casual home use it is a professional machine with configuration ability for purpose and few home users would need such raw power especially in todays computers, this fact renders the current setup of the MacPro outdated,

Professional users don't need legacy drives! Professional users cost a machine for its use and potential "Return On Investment", speed, reliability and interface-ability is paramount.

Intel are adopting the next generation architecture PCI interface standard this ups the anti for new PCIe cards like Aga, Blackmagic and Apogee, and also brings the new FusionIO Flash ssd type PCIe cards with up to 5Terrabt/card, and 32mbt ram cards but all this cost is well beyond the average personal user, ie "horses for courses".

On the other hand the Macmicro does not give the user any upgradeability at all as you cant add Toshiba ssd Blades and is therefor severely limited.

Imac is a wonderful integrated desktop that coupled with future cloud computing is an ideal office and home thin client user interface, no professional user would use it as a main computer in the studio because you can't configure it for the industry standard PCIe cards that Intel are furthering to the next generation of for the future.

The Idea that a studio server or render farm would use tens of wired boxes to do the job of the Macpro is ludicrous, the Macpro is designed to house all this in one neat package avoiding all such mayhem and technical hassles that go along with such idioticy.

There are two simple requirements in separates,
1, Macmicro could be redesigned as a standalone miniPCIe expantion server for SOHO/Home use through thunderbolt.

2, MacPro can be redesigned to better serve an expanding Pro market & cloud service providers such as their new Datacentre,

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Posted by MJTEIX This makes absolutly no sense.
- 8 full PCIe slots would take more than half the volume of a current MP, where do you put the cpus/RAM/ODD/power supply? Externally?
- 32gbt of RAM slots doesn't mean squat, 32GB of RAM is not that much as the current MP can support 64GB, and would handle more if Apple had offered 6 slots per cpu instead of 4.
- six 2TB SSD cards + 1 full graphics card = 7 slots, I don't know where you get 2 extra SSD slots, where do you put your pro audio interface card(s): USB/FW?, your DSP card(s): FW?

Pro users often 19" rackmount their computers hence width(tower hight) needs to remain the same perhaps with the addition of mounting wings. the size of the power supply is twice that of standard 1K PWM PSUs so no problem with reducing size there. Sandy bridge/Ivy bridge processors can use more efficient smaller cooling heat-sink transfer systems... see Overclockers website.
therefor the hight of motherboard and 8 full size PCIe slots can easily fit in a case reduced to 4.5 unit hight, and depth reduced by 3", therefor the resultant design would be some 40% by volume smaller in size, It would only need 2 thunderbolt connectors for totompoling stacks. as thunderbolt has multi fan out to six deep connectivity level will provide for any peripheral, all other specialized purpose interface will be afforded by the specialized PCIe cards made within the industry Thunderbolt video HDMI SDI...

This would allow almost limitless professional configurability neatly maintained in the MacPro with integrated MacOS/ServerOS. would be highly cost effective solution for business, and if you can't configure a purpose within 8 PCIe slots then double your machines in tandem or get another JOB.
You could even consider a single 6core processor board as low end in the same cost effective casing for super gaming machine status.

Well theres my take on it but if Apple don't want to take advantage of that market with their perfectly positioned developed and supported Macpro, then I agree the MacPro is dead and it will be time to move on.
One other last thing Now the other major players have seen Apple doing so well in the domestic market designs it is only a matter of time before they step up to take their market share, Sony have already announced their Adoption of thundrbolt, one needs to retain all arrows to the bow in business.

Pro users often 19" rackmount their computers hence width(tower hight) needs to remain the same perhaps with the addition of mounting wings. the size of the power supply is twice that of standard 1K PWM PSUs so no problem with reducing size there. Sandy bridge/Ivy bridge processors can use more efficient smaller cooling heat-sink transfer systems... see Overclockers website.
therefor the hight of motherboard and 8 full size PCIe slots can easily fit in a case reduced to 4.5 unit hight, and depth reduced by 3", therefor the resultant design would be some 40% by volume smaller in size, It would only need 2 thunderbolt connectors for totompoling stacks. as thunderbolt has multi fan out to six deep connectivity level will provide for any peripheral, all other specialized purpose interface will be afforded by the specialized PCIe cards made within the industry Thunderbolt video HDMI SDI...

Wow! You really live in another world. A world with different laws of physics. A world without measuring tapes. A world without calculators.